What's the Big Deal About Walla Walla?

Walla Walla is the place to be... farm living is the life for me....


It's January. The stubble of the last wheat harvest sticks up like a flat-top buzz-cut across the dun rolling fields as I head toward town down the rural double-lane highway. An icy layer of fog softens the dells like floating ghostly pillows in the shallow depressions. Silos and barns, horses and farmhouses, tractors and trailers, fruit and vegetable stalls dot the roadside and beyond as I cruise this road I have taken many times before. This is not Napa! When it's not winter, looking out over the Walla Walla Valley from any high point is to look at a beautiful pastoral painting. Soft rolling hills sporting changing hues of browns and greens flow off into the distance, etched with patterns of agriculture, punctuated here and there with signs of habitation, livestock and really big sky. It's beautiful American farm land and comes replete with the rich smells and inherent sounds of such a place. That's not to say there isn't a town. As you come over the last crest, the town of Walla Walla is laid out before you looking the very part of a small American farm city that's seeing good times again.


When I first started going out to Walla Walla in the mid-90's there were 12 wineries and a dusty, boarded-up downtown. Everyone involved in this localized wine world, a tight-knit group of friends with an attitude toward sharing knowledge, labor and equipment - a practice that continues. Today there are over 70 wineries in Walla Walla with more on the way. I was on my way to meet up with some winemaking friends to discuss everything from upcoming releases and what's slumbering away in barrels, what new vineyards had been planted and where, and how the oenology program was coming along at the community college. It' s also a damned good excuse to drink a lot of amazing wine, catch up with the recent gossip, cook some great meals with friends and in general have a Dionysian weekend. It was post- harvest, the new wines were sleeping in tank and barrel, and the holidays were but a memory; everyone was looking forward to some quiet time just relaxing without chores, phones and faxes, emails and winery visitors.


But wait just a minute - let's use the way-back machine and visit hell on earth! The Walla Walla region, in fact the entire Columbian plateau, is perched atop massive basalt flows deposited during the Cenozoic era; layer upon layer of lava continuously roiled out of the earth blanketing a vast region over a geologic age, creating the third largest such formation in the world. Things cooled and calmed down for a while but then came the flood about 15,000 years ago during the last ice age, when continental glaciers spanned the region. It was much more than biblical! If you can imagine a flood carrying the water volume of all the rivers on our planet at once, mulitplied by a power of 10 - moving across the landscape at 75mph with a depth of several hundred feet... well it's really hard to grasp that picture but let's just say "surfs up" and you better bring a long board!


What set the stage for such an outrageous event? During the last ice age there was a lake as big as the Great Lakes today. It was held in check by an ice dam. It covered Montana. That is until it decided it didn't like the real estate in Montana anymore and yearned to join the sea. Only one problem: the ice dam and the huge stretch of land to the west that was in its way. Eventually the enormous, continuous pressure of the lake water burst the ice dam and the lake drained over the Columbia Plateau, wreaking havoc and scouring out deep canyons and valleys gouging out deep cuts in the basalt layers. As the waters drained, silty alluvial soils were deposited in deep layers blanketing the region. Then the ice dam reformed, the lake refilled and the process repeated itself every 25 to 50 years. Geologic records show these cataclysmic floods occurred in this region 44 or 45 times over a 3000 year period. With each flood a new layer of loess, silt, cobbles and loam was deposited in varying compositions in different areas, building up layer upon layer of fine and complex soils on top of the basalt flows. Amazing and deep complex soils, perfect growing day conditions, clean water, great drainage, the same latitude as Bordeaux and Burgundy - presto - wine country! You're now an expert!


Walla Walla Washington however - even with a great stage setting, is truly an unlikely place to be pegged as the new Mecca of fine wine in the US. It's really out of the way. There are no major metropolitan cities within hundreds of miles (Seattle 275 miles, Boise 260 miles, and Portland 250 miles) and until recently there was little hospitality industry to speak of. So how did a world-class wine industry pop into existence in such a short period of time? For one thing it has a deep agricultural history that dates back to the late 1850's. The early settlers, who of course double-crossed the local Indians (who in turn had a little massacre party,) planted wheat. For several decades in the early part of the 20th Century Walla Walla was the wheat capital of America, a crop still grown in abundance today throughout the Palouse prairie. Then came barley, corn, potatoes, peas, asparagus, apples and pears, dairy and meat farming, the Walla Walla Sweet Onion and much more.


In 1974 Gary Figgins, an ambitious and all around great guy with an Italian family-winemaking history, got a harebrained notion to plant a vineyard. In 1977 the first wine made from that vineyard was bottled as Leonetti Cellars and Gary's first commercial release - the 1978 Cabernet Sauvignon was judged by Wine & Spirits Best in America. Like a firework painting a night sky the Walla Walla wine industry was born. Rick Small, a friend of Gary's decided that maybe he was onto something and Woodward Canyon was born a few years later. These were not some backwoods "I'll drink it cause it's here" wineries. Both Gary and Rick took to winemaking with a dedicated passion, creating stylish and poised red wines that were at once serious and professional. Then along came Norm McKibben. Norm figured that vintners needed grapes. He audaciously planted out Seven Hills and Pepper Bridge vineyards - which today account for nearly 200 acres of fine vines, each showing the unique terroir of their location and orientation. Vineyard planting has continued and increased as new microclimates are identified and now total almost 1,400 acres.


With the success of Leonetti Cellars and Woodward Canyon wineries, and a sudden abundance of vitus vinifera grapes available, others in the valley began to take notice. Roger Cockerline opened Bunchgrass Cellars and Marty Clubb started up L'Ecole No. 41 wineries, the Dunham family started up Dunham Cellars, Gordy Venneri and Miles Anderson teamed up and opened Walla Walla Vintner and Chuck Reininger opened Reininger. Others joined the ranks and all of a sudden people started to notice wines bearing a Walla Walla address popping up all over the state. One of the big changes that occurred though was when a short and very energetic Frenchman appeared on the scene. Funny and personable with a deep French accent, he came to Walla Walla with a deep family history in winemaking from the Champagne region.


Christophe Baron started up Cayuse Vineyards with a dream. From the beginning Christophe farmed biodynamically and started to make single-vineyard Syrahs of profound depth unlike any from American soil. Big scores from Parker soon followed and suddenly Walla Walla was no longer a killer locals secret. All I can say is that the first time I tasted his Bionic Frog syrah I was immediately transported to Hermitage. Big and robust, earthy and gamey, with bold sweet fruit and ultrafine balance - this was a wine to be reckoned with on an international level. It set a whole new standard for what could be done on American land - Walla Walla has never been the same since.


Walla Walla does have its issues though. The area is prone to regular arctic freezes in the winter very 7 to 10 years - which many vignerons take great pains to mitigate. The extreme damage that these freezes incur are fought by burying the canes of the vines before winter, thus ensuring a crop in the coming year. It is an expensive and time consuming chore that nevertheless has to be done. Like a warm blanket, covering the canes prevents a freeze from destroying the canes down to the trunk. This however only works until a really deep arctic freeze sets in; then it will take every bit of equipment and a lot of late nights to prevent the kind of damage that will occur. Smudge pots, big fans, a blanket of frozen water - all will be needed to insulate the vines and save the trunks and root stock when the really deep arctic freeze happens; it's overdue. However enough with the negative - now for the positive: Washington has longer growing days - by 2 hours - than California. The days are often hotter and nights are always cooler than its famous southerly counterpart. This combination makes for ideal conditions for growing grapes. Through this combination grapes come in with perfect levels of sugars and phenolic ripeness at the same time. The really big advantage though is the cool nights: the grapes maintain their natural acidity so the wines show better balance naturally without having to resort to tricks in the fermentation and barrel rooms.


So what are the wines of Walla Walla I hear you scream after all this reading! Sleek, sophisticated, poised, balanced, precise, rich, bold, full of varietal flavor; these are just some of the attributes that have been used to describe the wines of Walla Walla. There is no shyness about the use of oak and yet there is such a deep understanding and sharing of knowledge of how different oak provides differing layers of complexity in a finished wine amongst the brain trust of the Walla Walla wine scene, so it is rare to find a wine that is over-oaked - a problem that other parts of the country seem to have on a consistent basis. The variety of variatals grown in Walla Walla AVA is also astounding: Red grapes are represented by Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec, Tempranillo, Carmenere, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Pinot Noir, Syrah and Mourvedre. White varietals planted are Chardonnay, Pinot gris, Chenin Blanc, Semillon, Viognier, Sauvignon Banc, Marsanne and Roussanne, Gewurztraminer, Riesling and Muscat. A rather outrageous line-up of the best varietals known in the world! Couple that with a local desire to make the best wines in America - weather single varietal, single vineyard wines, or Bordeaux and Chateauneuf styled blends - both red and white, and you've got a region that needs to be reckoned with.


Over the long and very cold weekend we hung around the big farm kitchen table, a fire roaring in the corner fireplace, all had a great time playing chef, enjoying many classic dishes that never seemed to end: a rich and satisfying Cassoulet (thank god we made a ton of of it,) duck confit, steak tartare, various dishes of foie gras, braised root vegetables, incredible desserts of every style, and so much more. The wines were superb and never ending even though at some point or another we all threw up the white flag of surrender. We caught up, pondered the future and reviled the past, solved the worlds problems and invented few new ones. The general consensus was that Walla Walla will not be overrun with Napa-esque Hummer-limo tours, hoards of drunken bicycle riders with bottle-laden pannier bags peddling zigzag from winery to winery, those demanding white zinfandel and sparkling shiraz and so much more that is wrong with other wine-tourism destinations. We all raised our glasses in toast to that and treasured the thought that this, at last, in America, is a real wine region producing world-class wine that just by a lucky act of geography will be left intact to do what it does best.


Salut,
Larry the Sommelier